Internet telephony clearinghouse services have been designed and developed for telephony services (voice and facsimile) delivered by gateways—devices that bridge Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) and Internet Protocol (IP) networks. A typical call scenario is supported by the clearinghouse services architecture 100 of FIG. 1. A calling party communicates with an origination gateway 115 via a telephone handset 110 connected to the PSTN 105. The origination gateway 115 uses clearinghouse services at a service point 120 coupled to an IP network 125 to identify and obtain call authorization for one or more termination gateways 130. The origination gateway 115 can select one of the identified termination gateways 130 to accept the call communication from the calling party via the IP network 125. One of the identified termination gateways 130 can complete the call communication to the called party at the handset 110′ via the PSTN 105.
A key characteristic of this architecture is that all access to the clearinghouse services relies on gateways. Gateway operators are the sole users of clearinghouse services; existing services are not visible to, or directly accessible by, end users.
There is a need to extend the clearinghouse architecture to support intelligent end user devices, such as personal computers, IP phones, cable multimedia terminal adapters, and residential gateways. A critical factor in such an expansion is ensuring that the resulting architecture is interoperable with existing clearinghouse services. That will give users of these devices access to existing networks for termination of their calls, and it will provide additional sources of traffic to existing networks.